


you're too old to be so shy

by Euterpe



Category: An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon Era, Canon Rewrite, Crack, F/F, Historical, POV Female Character, Time Travel Fix-It, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-08-22 16:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8292410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euterpe/pseuds/Euterpe
Summary: Roberta dies and lives again.(Or: Roberta Alden relives Lycurgus, grows a pair, and catches the eye of Samuel Griffiths's youngest daughter.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this fic partly because this book doesn't treat its women very nicely but mostly because i'm trash
> 
> (dreiser is rolling in his grave) (sorry not sorry)
> 
> (title taken from "candles" by daughter)

 

 

> _"I am just sad...I couldn’t help thinking of what a dear place we might have had, if only my dreams had come true."_
> 
> \- Roberta Alden,  _An American Tragedy_ by Theodore Dreiser

 

Roberta Alden, brown hair floating and grand hopes fleeting, dies a tragedy. 

She wishes she could say that she doesn't remember how it feels, but unfortunately she can recall every second of it. It's the most painful thing she's ever experienced. As her head bobs through the surface of the Big Bittern, Roberta wonders if she'll have to learn how to swim in heaven. If heaven had its own lake, surely it wouldn't be so awfully cold.

Her muffled scream is lost to dozens of struggling bubbles. Her lungs give in. Roberta, thrashing, chokes on black water. She remembers someone, possibly her mother, telling her that a dying person is supposed to see flashes of their life immediately before the end. How utterly wrong. Roberta sees no such images, not of her parents nor of her siblings nor of her friends. She sees only the dark body of a man—Clyde—outlined by the glimmer of the sun against the quaking mass of a faraway land. 

Roberta drowns.

But in this story, her body is not fished out two days later by distraught workers. She does not become the spearhead of a fervent crusade against the wealthy. In this story, Roberta opens her eyes again in a well-lit kitchen on Taylor Street. 

There are people talking to her—they are familiar, but she does not remember their names. A half-eaten bowl of oatmeal sits before her on the checkered tablecloth. A girl in the seat to her left glares at her curiously and giggles.

"Roberta," she says. "Did you hear what I just said?"

Roberta shakes her head. "What?"

"This is so unlike you," the girl sighs. "You aren't usually so absent-minded. I just asked you how excited you were to start your first day at work."

Roberta blinks. "First day at work?" she asks, her memory evading her.

The girl—her name is Grace Marr, Roberta now remembers—squints suspiciously. "Are you being funny, Roberta? It isn't very nice, you know."

"I'm not!" Roberta protests. "I'm genuinely confused, I—" And the realization hits her. "Grace," she says, extremely grave, "what is today's date?"

Grace laughs and brushes her fingertips against Roberta's forehead. "Have you got a fever? Were you not sleeping well last night?"

"Grace."

"It's the twentieth of July," Grace huffs, her humor gone. "What has gotten into you?"

Roberta opens her mouths and closes it. "Sorry. I, um. You were right. I haven't been, uh, sleeping very well lately."

"Well, your health is most important if you'd like to keep your job," is all Grace says. If she were any other factory girl in Lycurgus, Grace would ask Roberta if she was enjoying the secret company of a man, but she is not any other factory girl in Lycurgus, and for that Roberta is grateful. She absolutely cannot deal with any insinuations on top of this—whatever this is. It cannot be heaven—that much Roberta is sure of. She quickly stands and excuses herself from the table, mumbling something vague about getting to the Griffiths factory on time.

"Why, it's only six-thirty!" a man—Mr. Newton, Grace's brother-in-law—exclaims. "Surely it won't take you so long."

Grace nods, irritated. "Besides, I'm not finished with my breakfast, and you promised we would walk together," she adds. "Why are you in such a hurry?"

"It's the nerves," Roberta explains weakly. "I just don't want to be late is all."

"Nonsense," insists Mrs. Newton, Grace's sister. "Let Grace walk with you. You're still new to Lycurgus, Roberta. You'll get lost."

Roberta almost tells Mrs. Newton that she's been living in Lycurgus for almost a year before she catches herself. "No, thank you. I'll be perfectly alright." She places her unfinished bowl of oatmeal into the sink. "I'll see everyone at dinner." And she leaves.

Roberta barely makes it fifteen yards out the front door before she catches a reflection of herself in the window of a general store. There she is, skin flushed and hair still, belly unmarked by the telltale bump of pregnancy.  Roberta touches her forehead, right where Clyde had struck her not an hour before. Clyde—today is the first day of work. Roberta is new to Lycurgus. She hasn't met Clyde yet.

Roberta bolts down Taylor Street, narrowly missing collision with a group of startled young men, and hides herself in a damp alleyway.  _Oh my god_ , she thinks. She slumps against a filthy wall and slides to the ground.  _Oh my god oh my god oh my god..._

For some miraculous, impossible reason, Roberta Alden's entire past year in Lycurgus has been erased. She weeps.


	2. Chapter 2

Perhaps in another universe, the righteous Orville Mason, Esq. will travel to a ramshackle farm in Biltz, New York, bearing news of a tragedy. Perhaps in another universe, the defeated Titus Alden will collapse against a tree, mourning the death of his eldest child. Perhaps in another universe, a pair of tired parents, stricken with the loss of their angel, will grieve in a living room, together. But this is not that universe, and this is not that story. That story is about selfishness, corruption, temptation. That story is about inevitability. This story is about second chances.

July twentieth, six-forty-four A.M., Lycurgus, New York: Roberta Alden drags herself out of an alleyway. She is fearful and disoriented and heartbroken. In her mind, she is the same Roberta who drowned in a lake, pregnant and terrified. She is sure of nothing but that she must get to work and never trust Clyde Griffiths again.

Roberta lets herself tremble as she hurries along Taylor Street. It is difficult for her to confront her emotions without descending again into a melodramatic mess, so she swallows them and attempts to replace them with rational thought. For all she knows, the past year in Lycurgus—Clyde, the baby, the lake—could have been a horribly realistic dream. Roberta could have fallen asleep on July nineteenth and dreamed through an entire year of fantasy and nightmare before waking up.

Yes, that must be the only logical explanation. It was all a twisted dream, no more and no less.

Roberta exhales sharply. Perhaps God had sent her a vision to warn her of future dangers, to punish her for her unholy desires. Roberta does not know what she could have done—could have wanted—to deserve this, but there must have been a reason. She was raised by parents who believed the best in her, and if she had done anything to test that faith, she must very well suffer the consequences, albeit in a rather strange subconscious manner.

She makes it past the bustle of employees and into the office portion of the Griffiths factory before she begins to break down again. There is that disagreeable telephone girl—the one who greeted Roberta in her dream—sitting behind a desk. Roberta's words catch in her throat, and she freezes, unable to walk any further toward the main office. An overwhelming feeling of familiarity slams into Roberta, and of course she has no idea why that is. Everything is familiar—too familiar. She chokes back tears and swipes a shaking hand across her face, desperate for a glass of ice water or lemonade or _something—_

"Well?" says the telephone girl, finally looking up from whatever had been occupying her. "What do you want?"

Roberta jumps. That was exactly what the girl had said in the—the dream? By this point, Roberta has begun to doubt if it even was a dream. It was too long, too real, too immersive...

When she was still working at Trippetts Mills, Roberta had read a fantastical novel during her breaks called  _The Time Machine._ It was by some British author whose name she cannot, for the life of her, remember, but she does recall its main character's ability to travel through time, unbounded by the laws of nature. She wonders if the same thing could have happened to her, if she was somehow transported back in time. But of course it would be impossible, and Roberta would be insane for even considering it, wouldn't she?

The telephone girl snaps her fingers impatiently. "I haven't got all day. What are you standing there for?"

Roberta smooths down her skirt and stumbles to the front desk. "Y-yes, I'm Roberta. Roberta Alden. I applied for a job last week?" 


	3. Chapter 3

Roberta sees him before he sees her. There he sits behind his small desk, staring wistfully out the small window of his small office. He has the same dark hair, the same angular nose, the same mischievous charm—Roberta almost falls in love with him all over again. Instead, she casts her eyes to the ground, ignoring the jolt of pain in her abdomen and the hollowness in her womb.

It was not a dream—this Roberta realizes. She doubts her subconscious could have conjured up Clyde Griffiths in all his deceitful glory: the man—the boy—she thought she could trust, the prince who saved her from oblivion, the father of her child. Roberta's stomach turns with a mixture of fear, disgust, and longing. She does not understand what she feels. When the department foreman leads her into Clyde's office and Clyde stands to greet them, Roberta refuses to meet his eyes. Still she cannot help but notice that he is a tad shorter than she remembers—perhaps he had grown within the year. 

Clyde sticks out his right hand for Roberta to shake. As she grasps his hand and he visibly brightens, she wonders if he, too, remembers their year of misguided passion. Then she says, "My name is Roberta Alden," and he says, "Nice to meet you, Miss Alden," with a curious smile, and she can tell that he doesn't remember. She doesn't know if she would have preferred he did, but for now she just bites her lip and nods.

The foreman—Mr. Liggett, Roberta remembers—leaves them alone in the office. Clyde gestures for her to sit in the chair opposite him. "Can you tell me a little more about yourself, Miss Alden?" he asks, collapsing into his chair and examining her paperwork.

"Of course, Cl—um, Mr. Griffiths," she stammers. And so she does. She tries to tell him about her work circumstances in the same unafflicted manner she had done so long ago, and she hopes she doesn't sound suspicious in any way. After she finishes, she takes a deep breath. She wonders if it's too late to find work elsewhere, perhaps in Finchley or Cranston—anywhere else would be better.

Clyde rubs the underside of his nose with the back of his index finger, a subconscious habit that almost shocks Roberta with its familiarity. He asks her for her name again and then her address, then comments that he had never been to Taylor Street himself. Roberta gets the feeling that Clyde is just making conversation by this point, and she wonders when, in her horrible not-dream, Clyde had become interested in her. Had he liked her since this first interview? Does he like her right now, at this very moment?

"It’s piece work, you know, stamping collars," says Clyde, standing again. "I’ll show you if you’ll just step over here." Roberta follows him, and she watches him demonstrate how to do something she had done a million times in her life already, something she could do with her eyes closed. Yet she nods when she's supposed to, smiles when she's supposed to, and after Miss Todd takes her to and from the locker room to drop off her hat and coat, Roberta picks up a collar and stamps it like she'd been doing it her whole life. 

Clyde is impressed, moreso than the first time. Roberta can see it in his surprised expression when he passes by to check on her. At this instant, she knows that she will be hired—it's too late to apply for another job. She silently curses herself for her stubbornness and competitiveness, but she continues to work anyway.

"I can't help but wonder if you've done this before, Miss Alden," Clyde says, and Roberta freezes. So familiar was this conversation that she had already been predicting what everyone would say, and Clyde had definitely never said that the first time they met. She fumbles with a collar and stamps it on the wrong side. Clyde notices her mistake. He coughs sheepishly. "I'm sorry, did I scare you?" he mumbles.

"Yes, a little," she replies. She swallows back the urge to apologize and discards her flawed collar to the side. "And for your first question, no. I haven't done this before."

"Then I must say, what you're doing so far is very impressive."

"Thank you, Mr. Griffiths," Roberta manages with a small smile, and she turns back to her work, careful not to make another mistake.


End file.
